To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video
Tags:
San Diego police on Wednesday released video footage of a man holding a gun to his head as he repeatedly implores officers to shoot him during a brief standoff in front of a City Heights home last week.Much of the roughly 10-minute video comes from the body-worn cameras from officers who encountered the man before three of them shot and killed him on 42nd Street near University Avenue.According to the video, the man repeatedly urges police to shoot him, first in an alley and then in front of a home on 42nd Street about 1 p.m. on Dec. 8.Police shoot the man with bean bags to take him down, but he runs behind a parked car, then quickly emerges with the gun in hand, police said.Three officers opened fire. He died at the scene.The man who died has been identified as John Ray Romano, 58, according to the county Sheriff’s Department, which investigates shootings in accordance with a countywide protocol meant to ensure local law enforcement agencies don’t investigate shootings by their own officers or deputies.Sheriff’s Lt. Chris Steffen said Monday that the gun, which officers believed was a real firearm at the time of the incident, “appears to be a BB or pellet gun.”The state’s Department of Justice considers BB guns and pellet guns deadly weapons, not replicas.The officers who opened fire were Gregory Bergman and Michael Thornton, who have been with the department just over two years, and Jonathan Estrada, who has been with San Diego police for three years. All are assigned to patrol in the Mid-City Division.This is Bergman’s second involvement in a fatal shooting Last year, he was one of two officers who opened fire on an armed man running from them through a drive-thru line of a fast food restaurant.Last week’s confrontation started with a 911 caller who reported seeing a man holding a gun to his head while riding a bike on Central Avenue not far from Teralta Park near Interstate 15, according to the video San Diego police released.Police found the man around 39th Street and University, tracking then confronting him in an alley behind 42nd where he ditched his bike.The body-worn camera footage provided by police starts in the middle of that confrontation, with police ordering the man identified as Romano to drop the gun.“No! Shoot me! Shoot me!” the man yells back.“I do not want to shoot you, bro. Please,” an officer yells.“Nobody wants to do that, buddy” another officer yells.Romano heads off and runs through an apartment complex where more officers are waiting for him on the other side, on 42nd Street.Romano continues to hold the gun to his head as he stands in a driveway in front of a home and smokes what looks to be a cigarette.Officers order him to drop the gun. He repeatedly responds: “Shoot me!” and “Kill me!”As a few officers huddle behind a car, one says “I’m gonna (expletive) shoot him right now. ... This is way too dangerous.”“Just relax,” a second officer repeats.The man continues to tell police to open fire. At one point he says what sounds like: “This is what I am gonna do. I’m gonna have you guys kill me.”A third officer shoots Romano twice with beanbags. Romano runs and ducks, re-emerges and is fatally shot.